Wandering Monster wrote:Form had written:Oh yes? Do tell... Out of curiosity, does anyone else think that these "specialist subclasses" of the "archetype" classes eventually led to the zillions of "kits" available to characters in the various 2nd Ed "Complete [fill in the blank]'s Handbooks"?Cheers,JohnHaka Wandering Monster
Wandering Monster wrote:Hey Form,Yes, I thought so -- I recognized the pic from his Wikipedia entry.At first glance, I thought it was some mobster figure from the 1920s or 1930s, but it's easy to forget that that's how regular people dressed back then too...Cheers,JohnHaka Wandering Monster
FormCritic wrote:The archer had all the abilities of the ranger, plus the ability to feather any creature to death with arrows. The bonuses added up fast and got quite silly. Pretty much, if an archer could see you at range you were most likely dead. God help flying monsters....I guess that's true..but I was pretty strict on bow use in dungeons...ie, they were unusable (that's what crossbows were for). Maybe this balanced them out? I can't even remmber it's been so long.We used most of the "unofficial" items in Dragon, including the "NPC" classes published there.Yep, we did too.The plethora of house rules and "unofficial" official rules led to the creation of Unearthed Arcana and two of the least logical character classes of all time...the cavalier and the barbarian.Never used a Cavalier, but had a couple of barbarians here and there.The "kits" in second edition were mostly unuseable except as story hooks. The quality of second edition publications...with their blue pick-up art and slick-but-dull drawings...was very low. Most of the splat books for the character classes and special topics (such as castles) left me feeling like I was holding a publication that should be describing Barbie's Magical Dream Date rather than grim, fantasy war.Not Gemmel/Cook type fantasy, for sure. I typically took maybe a kit or two from each book and rewrote them to my specifications. Some books probably got more used than others...Monster Mythology for one, Of Ships and Sea for another.The Duelist was popular in my campaigns. We had a number of anti-paladins over the years, but there was no need for a publication about an NPC class in order to create them.One of the Dragon issues presented rules for paladins for each type of alighnment...but the chaotic neutral paladin was so superior to all of the rest as to make the others pointless.Never used any paladins, or the duelist. Most of the guys I gamed with loved to just roll up your garden variety dwarf fighter most of the time.I would guess that Dragon has to have been the most photocopied magazine of all time. Although...White Dwarf published enough rules expansions for Warhammer and Warhammer 40K that maybe it rivals Dragon.
FormCritic wrote:The archer had all the abilities of the ranger, plus the ability to feather any creature to death with arrows. The bonuses added up fast and got quite silly. Pretty much, if an archer could see you at range you were most likely dead. God help flying monsters....
We used most of the "unofficial" items in Dragon, including the "NPC" classes published there.
The plethora of house rules and "unofficial" official rules led to the creation of Unearthed Arcana and two of the least logical character classes of all time...the cavalier and the barbarian.
The "kits" in second edition were mostly unuseable except as story hooks. The quality of second edition publications...with their blue pick-up art and slick-but-dull drawings...was very low. Most of the splat books for the character classes and special topics (such as castles) left me feeling like I was holding a publication that should be describing Barbie's Magical Dream Date rather than grim, fantasy war.
The Duelist was popular in my campaigns. We had a number of anti-paladins over the years, but there was no need for a publication about an NPC class in order to create them.One of the Dragon issues presented rules for paladins for each type of alighnment...but the chaotic neutral paladin was so superior to all of the rest as to make the others pointless.
I would guess that Dragon has to have been the most photocopied magazine of all time. Although...White Dwarf published enough rules expansions for Warhammer and Warhammer 40K that maybe it rivals Dragon.
FormCritic wrote:I think the picture is rather sad, since it reflects the person REH wanted to be rather than the person he actually was.REH was typically sloppy and quite casual about his clothes. I read REH's scorn for litearary critics and general affected distaste for mankind as a manifestation of his strong need for acceptance.Downer...huh?Mark
Badmike wrote:Hey, I never had any problem with kits...if they had cut them down to roughly half as many. For our campaigns, we used the anti paladin (as a bad guy NPC), samurai, archer, incantrix (once agan, bad guy NPC), Witch (ditto). Maybe a couple others I can't remmber. I don't remember the archer being any less/more powerful than anyone else at the time. The samurai eventually became something like 9th level, so that one worked out pretty good. Mike B.
Badmike wrote: I wouldn't move to Cross Plains for free room and board and a visit from the Pusscat Dolls every weekend....Mike B.
Badmike wrote:I don't think any of the biographies about him have ever really solved him.
Most of the guys I gamed with loved to just roll up your garden variety dwarf fighter most of the time
gyg wrote:Presumably a garden variety dwarf would be a gnome (fishing rod optional)
